


once more

by orphan_account



Category: Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/F, Modern AU, Not Proofread, another mess from me, lysinette week 2020, musician au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:40:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23220343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Just a short thing for Lysinette Week Day 3: Musician AU!
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Lysithea von Ordelia
Kudos: 13





	once more

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve realised that I’m doing Lysinette Week in a completely different time zone to others, but I’m going to just roll with it. So, here’s Day 3!

Today is the first time that Annette Fantine and Lysithea von Ordelia will be performing together, not just as partners in music-making, but partners everywhere else. 

Lysithea smooths down her white hair, frowning as static electricity causes parts to lift up. 

She shouldn’t be nervous. The songs they are performing today are ones she’s played many times before, in many places. They are the songs that everyone, when they hear Lysithea von Ordelia, think of. 

It’s just… she fiddles with her guitar, trying out fingerings that pop into her head… nerve-wracking to walk out with Annette and for everyone to know that they’re together. No more of secret smiles, hands twisted together under the table so nobody notices. Perhaps it is the loss of anonymity causing Lysithea’s nerves.   
She smooths down her black shirt and trousers, having declined to wear a dress. 

“Miss Lysithea?” The stage assistant coming into Lysithea’s dressing rooms wears a look somewhere in between panic and easy confidence (oxymoronic, but Lysithea’s life is entirely oxymoronic already). Lysithea slings the strap of her guitar—a gift from Annette: roses over a music stave—over her head and sticks her earphone in her ear. 

She follows the assistant out, and almost immediately is transported to the different world of backstage Spirit Theatre. Little lighting, the constant scurrying of stage assistants, the many pieces of equipment scattered across the area. This is intimately familiar to her by now, and she stands quietly as she always does until a stage assistant taps her shoulder and says “Lysithea von Ordelia? To the curtain, please.”

Lysithea waits in between the heavy black curtains as the announcer who they’ve hired for tonight—Byleth Eisner, a raven-haired person in entirely black—says into the mic, “And now, performing together as a couple for the first time—Annette Fantine and Lysithea von Ordelia!”

There’s raucous applause as Lysithea walks on and into blinding lights. The audience is dim, and as her eyes adjust she barely manages to pick out them. 

Not that she’s going to be looking much at them. Her eyes are only for Annette, directly opposite her onstage, smiling like the sun itself. Lysithea smiles back, never as radiantly, but it’s a true smile nevertheless. 

“Thank you!” Annette’s smile carries through into her voice and the mic. “Tonight, we’re going to be playing a few of our favorite songs.”  
Annette nods to Lysithea, and she starts tuning, just for show. Lysithea hears Annette’s gentle hum of an A, and her cheeks pink slightly. Annette has that effect on her.

The first song, they had jointly decided, was going to be Once More. Just as AC/DC had ‘Back in Black’, so had Annette, as a flailing singer, had ‘Once More’. Lysithea has heard it enough times to know its every loop and twist, every ebb and flow. That song is as familiar to her as ‘Bring Me To Life’ (Evanescence) was during her goth period. 

The first note is a C major chord, played by the piano when this song was first recorded, but now played by Lysithea’s slim but steady fingers. Annette takes a deep breath, closes her eyes for a moment, then looks up at Lysithea. 

“I thought there wouldn’t be anything  
I thought I’d lost what I’d had  
I thought I’d left it all behind   
I thought I’d done it all wrong”

A key change—the removal of a sharp, changing to a natural.

“But now I know that life is a cycle  
That everything I had and done will return  
So let me lose and leave and muck things up  
They’ll come back… once more”

Lysithea brings her own microphone to her mouth and echos Annette’s last two words, perfectly pitched. There’s nothing ingenuous about Annette’s small smile at that.

“Now I have my friends, my family  
I know that I’ll make mistakes  
But they’ll be here for me, I know that now  
Your gifts will repay, as will mine

So tell the world it should do its best  
I know that they will stay with me  
Now, and again, and over and over  
They’ll be with me… once more.” 

The closing note is a chord of G major, the end note of a series of flourishes after Annette’s last line. Lysithea gets up to the applause. There’s cheering and the lights rise, so she can see all those faces suddenly. They’re all clapping madly, and one yells “This is what I do it for!”

Lysithea swings her guitar around to her back, and takes both of Annette’s hands. The cheering swells and encompasses them. 

Onstage, they lean in, white hair flying to meet ginger, like they were always born to come together, and their lips meet. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, please leave kudos and/or a comment!


End file.
